EsotericErin

Tag: self-trust

  • You Can Mean What You Say Without Needing Someone Else to Agree

    There’s a particular kind of frustration that comes with knowing what you believe and not being able to get someone else to see it.

    You explain what you mean. You offer an example. You try a different way of putting it, hoping that perhaps this time the words will land a little differently.

    You clarify what you meant by that thing you said three sentences ago.

    You explain why it matters to you.

    And when the other person still doesn’t agree, you find yourself trying again.

    Not necessarily because you think they’re being unreasonable. Sometimes you just want to be understood. You want them to see what you see, to recognize what feels so clear to you, to understand why you’ve come to believe what you believe.

    And there’s nothing inherently wrong with wanting that.

    Being understood can feel like a kind of connection. It can be a relief to discover that someone else sees what you’ve been trying to articulate, that something you’ve struggled to put into words makes sense to another person.

    But I wonder what happens when being understood quietly becomes something we need.

    When sharing what we believe turns into trying to get someone else to agree with us.

    When we keep explaining, not because we’ve thought of something new to say, but because we’re not quite ready to leave the conversation without the response we hoped for.

    Sometimes we aren’t trying to share a perspective anymore. We’re trying to produce a particular outcome.

    We want the other person to see it our way. To understand why we think what we think. To recognize that we’ve considered this carefully, that we have reasons for our position, that we’re not simply saying something without thought.

    And perhaps, underneath all that explaining, there’s a hope that if they finally understand us, we can stop feeling the distance between what we believe and what they believe.

    But understanding doesn’t always lead to agreement.

    Someone can understand your reasoning and still reach a different conclusion. They can recognize why something matters to you without valuing it in the same way. They can listen carefully, take your perspective seriously, and still decide that they see things differently.

    And sometimes, no matter how clearly you explain yourself, someone simply won’t see what you see.

    I think that’s a difficult thing to make room for, especially when we’re talking about something we care deeply about.

    Because when something feels important to us, it can be hard to understand how another person could look at the same situation and arrive somewhere else.

    We might assume that if we could just explain it properly, they’d understand.

    If we could find the right words, give the right example, or help them see the part they’re missing, perhaps we’d finally arrive at the same place.

    Sometimes a conversation does change when we find a better way to express ourselves. Sometimes we discover that we’ve misunderstood each other, or that there’s something important we hadn’t considered.

    It’s worth making room for that possibility.

    But not every disagreement is a misunderstanding waiting to be resolved.

    Sometimes we understand each other well enough. We simply don’t agree.

    And perhaps that’s where we have to decide what we’re asking of the conversation.

    Are we sharing something because we want to offer another perspective? Are we explaining what we believe because we want someone to understand us better?

    Or have we started measuring the success of what we’ve said by whether the other person agrees?

    I think those can be surprisingly easy things to confuse.

    We might tell ourselves we’re just trying to explain, when really we’re finding it difficult to let the other person leave with a different opinion.

    We might keep offering reasons, examples, and explanations because their disagreement feels like an unresolved problem.

    And sometimes we might even begin to soften what we believe, not because our understanding has changed, but because we want to make it easier for the other person to accept.

    We find ourselves looking for a version of our own perspective that will be more agreeable, less challenging, easier to hear.

    There’s a difference between communicating with care and making our beliefs palatable enough that nobody has to disagree with us.

    We can be thoughtful about how we express ourselves. We can consider our audience, choose our words carefully, and remain open to the possibility that we’ve missed something.

    But we don’t have to make agreement the condition that allows us to stand behind what we believe.

    We can mean what we say even when someone else doesn’t share our view.

    We can explain why something matters to us without needing the other person to care about it in the same way.

    We can offer what we’ve learned without deciding what someone else ought to do with it.

    And we can allow another person to make their own choices, even when we’d choose differently.

    I think this matters because sharing what we believe is part of how we connect with other people. It’s how we offer our experiences, our questions, our ideas, and the things we’ve come to understand.

    We don’t have to keep those things to ourselves simply because we can’t guarantee how they’ll be received.

    We can speak honestly. We can offer a perspective that matters to us. We can explain why we’ve come to see something the way we do.

    And then we can leave room for the other person to have their own relationship with what we’ve said.

    They might agree.

    They might disagree.

    They might recognize something useful in what we’ve shared but interpret it differently. They might carry one small part of the conversation with them and leave the rest behind.

    They might not find it useful at all.

    We don’t always get to know what someone else will take from an exchange, or whether it will change anything for them.

    And I don’t think we need to.

    There’s something freeing about allowing a conversation to be a conversation, rather than treating it as a task with a particular result we’re responsible for producing.

    We can contribute something without controlling what comes of it.

    We can offer a perspective without needing it to become someone else’s perspective.

    We can be clear about what we believe without needing to make it universal.

    This doesn’t mean we have to become indifferent to whether people understand us. Of course it matters. There are conversations where being understood is important, where we need to clarify our intentions, explain the impact of someone’s actions, or work toward a shared understanding.

    And there are times when continuing the conversation is worthwhile because something important remains unresolved.

    But not every difference needs to be settled.

    Not every disagreement means we’ve failed to communicate.

    And not every person we care about needs to arrive at the same conclusion for us to remain connected to them.

    Sometimes we can care about someone and disagree with them.

    Sometimes we can believe something strongly without needing to make it the belief everyone else lives by.

    Sometimes we can say what we mean, listen to what comes back, and recognize that we’ve reached the point where there’s nothing more we need to prove.

    The other person gets to decide what they think.

    We get to decide what we think.

    And neither of us has to surrender that simply to make the conversation feel complete.

    I think there’s a kind of trust in that.

    Trusting ourselves enough to express what we believe without needing agreement to confirm that we were right to say it.

    Trusting other people enough to leave room for them to think, interpret, and choose for themselves.

    Trusting that a difference in perspective doesn’t always need to be repaired.

    We can still be curious. We can still ask questions. We can still change our minds when something genuinely changes our understanding.

    And we can let a conversation affect us without requiring it to end in consensus.

    Maybe we don’t need to measure the value of what we share by how many people agree with us.

    Maybe sometimes the value is simply that we expressed something honestly, gave another person something to consider, and allowed them the freedom to decide what it meant to them.

    We don’t have to convince everyone.

    We don’t have to keep explaining until someone sees it our way.

    We don’t have to take responsibility for what another person chooses to do with what we’ve shared.

    We can mean what we say.

    We can care about how we say it.

    And we can leave room for someone else to see things differently.

    You can share what you believe with others without needing them to agree.

  • When Someone Else Sounds More Certain Than You


    Sometimes you can know something perfectly well until someone else tells you you’re wrong.

    You remember what happened. You know what you meant. You’ve thought about how you feel, what you need, or why something matters to you.

    And then someone else offers their version.

    They sound certain. They explain it differently. They tell you what really happened, what you actually meant, or why you shouldn’t feel the way you do.

    And suddenly, something you felt reasonably sure about starts to feel less solid.

    You go back over the conversation in your head.

    Did I misunderstand?

    Am I being unfair?

    Maybe they have a point.

    Maybe I’m making too much of it.

    Maybe I should think about it a little more.

    Sometimes, of course, we should. Other people can notice things we’ve missed. They can offer information we didn’t have or perspectives we hadn’t considered. Being willing to reconsider our understanding is part of being human.

    But I wonder how often we begin questioning ourselves not because someone has given us a good reason to, but because they’ve expressed their own perspective with enough confidence that we start treating it as more credible than ours.

    As though certainty itself were evidence.

    I think a lot of women know this feeling.

    We’ve been taught, in all sorts of ways, to consider other people’s feelings. To be accommodating. To give people the benefit of the doubt. To question whether we’re being too sensitive, too demanding, too difficult.

    We’ve learned to explain ourselves carefully, to soften what we mean, to anticipate how our words might be received.

    And sometimes, before we’ve even finished expressing what we think, we’re already making room for the possibility that we’re wrong.

    Meanwhile, someone else can say the same thing with absolute conviction, and their certainty is taken as a sign that they know what they’re talking about.

    Sometimes they do.

    But sometimes they’re simply more comfortable being certain.

    And those are not the same thing.

    Someone can speak forcefully without having considered every angle. They can be confident in their interpretation without knowing what you’ve experienced. They can have an answer for your feelings without actually understanding them.

    Their confidence doesn’t automatically make them more knowledgeable about your life than you are.

    And yet, it’s surprisingly easy to let someone else’s certainty become the measure against which we judge our own.

    We start looking to them to confirm what we already suspected.

    We explain our decisions until they make sense to someone else.

    We keep revisiting something we’ve already thought through because another person doesn’t agree with us.

    We might even find ourselves asking for advice when what we’re really hoping for is permission to trust what we already know.

    I don’t think there’s anything wrong with wanting reassurance. We all need other people sometimes. We need conversation, perspective, and the experience of being understood.

    But there’s a difference between inviting someone into our thinking and making their agreement a condition of trusting ourselves.

    One leaves room for us to learn something.

    The other leaves us waiting for someone else to tell us that we’re allowed to believe what we believe.

    And I think that difference matters.

    Because your own truth isn’t limited to the opinions you hold or the conclusions you reach.

    Sometimes it’s what you know about your own experience.

    It’s knowing that something hurt, even if someone else thinks you shouldn’t have been hurt by it.

    It’s knowing what you meant, even if someone else has decided they know your intentions better than you do.

    It’s recognizing that a situation isn’t working for you, even if someone else thinks you have no reason to complain.

    It’s understanding what matters to you, what you need, what you’re willing to accept, and what no longer feels right.

    Other people can offer their interpretations. They can disagree with your choices. They can tell you how they experienced the same situation, and sometimes that information will change how you see it.

    But they cannot automatically replace your experience with theirs.

    Someone else’s understanding of what happened doesn’t erase what you lived through.

    Someone else’s priorities don’t determine what matters to you.

    And someone else’s certainty doesn’t mean you have to abandon your own perspective.

    This doesn’t mean we have to treat our understanding as infallible.

    We can be mistaken. We can misunderstand someone. We can discover that we’ve overlooked something important or held onto an interpretation that no longer fits what we know.

    We can listen, reconsider, and change our minds.

    But we can do those things without assuming we’re wrong simply because someone else sounds more certain that we are.

    We can ask ourselves whether they’ve offered something worth considering, rather than automatically treating their confidence as proof.

    We can be curious about their perspective without immediately making it our own.

    We can take time to think about what they’ve said and notice what we still believe after we’ve had that time.

    And we can allow ourselves to disagree without needing to prove that the other person is wrong.

    Sometimes two people understand a situation differently. Sometimes they have different needs or values. Sometimes they remember the same conversation in different ways.

    Not every disagreement needs a verdict.

    And not every difference in perspective needs to be resolved before we’re allowed to trust our own judgment.

    I think this is part of what self-trust asks of us.

    Not that we become so certain of ourselves that nobody else’s opinion can reach us.

    Not that we stop listening, questioning, or learning.

    But that we stop treating our own understanding as the least reliable one in the room.

    That we give ourselves the same consideration we so readily extend to other people.

    That when someone challenges us, we can pause and ask whether there’s something useful in what they’re saying without immediately putting our own experience on trial.

    We can make room for another person’s perspective without making ours disappear.

    And perhaps we can learn to recognize the difference between being genuinely uncertain about something and feeling uncertain because someone else has decided we ought to be.

    Those feelings can look remarkably similar from the inside.

    But they don’t always call for the same response.

    Sometimes we need to think something through again.

    Sometimes we need to hear someone else’s perspective.

    And sometimes we need to remember that we’ve already thought about this. That we have reasons for what we believe. That we know things about our own lives that someone else cannot know simply by speaking with conviction.

    We don’t have to keep reopening every question just because someone else has a different answer.

    We don’t have to explain ourselves until everyone understands.

    And we don’t have to wait for someone else’s agreement before we’re allowed to trust what we know.

    Maybe trusting your own truth isn’t about being certain that you’re right.

    Maybe it’s about knowing that your perspective deserves to be part of the conversation, even when someone else’s is louder.

    You can listen without disappearing into someone else’s version of events.

    You can reconsider without assuming you were wrong.

    You can change your mind when something genuinely changes your understanding.

    And you can hold onto what you know, even when someone else doesn’t see it the same way.

    You don’t have to abandon your own truth just because someone else is more certain of theirs.

  • You Don’t Have to Know It’s the Right Choice

    There’s a particular kind of discomfort that comes with making a decision when you don’t know how it’s going to turn out.

    You can think it through. Weigh the options. Ask people you trust. Make a list of pros and cons.

    You can consider every possible outcome you can imagine.

    And still, eventually, you have to choose without knowing what happens next.

    I think that’s the part we sometimes struggle with most.

    Not necessarily making the decision itself, but accepting that we can’t know in advance whether it will work out the way we hope.

    What if I choose this and regret it?

    What if the other option would have been better?

    What if I’m missing something important?

    What if I make the wrong choice?

    Sometimes these are useful questions. There may be information we haven’t considered, consequences we need to think through, or people whose perspectives would help us.

    But sometimes we’ve considered everything we reasonably can.

    And we’re still waiting.

    Waiting for a sign.

    Waiting to feel certain.

    Waiting for the moment when one option finally feels so obviously right that choosing it no longer feels like a risk.

    I wonder how much of our lives we spend waiting for that feeling.

    Because certainty can be awfully reassuring. If we could know that we were making the right decision, we could move forward without having to worry about what might happen if we weren’t.

    We could choose without risking regret.

    We could act without having to live with the possibility that things might not work out.

    But that’s not quite how decisions work, is it?

    We make them with the information we have, the circumstances we’re in, the resources available to us, and the understanding we’ve developed so far.

    And then life continues.

    New information arrives. Circumstances change. Other people make their own choices. Things we couldn’t have anticipated become relevant.

    Sometimes our decisions work out beautifully.

    Sometimes they don’t.

    Sometimes we make a thoughtful decision and still get an outcome we never wanted.

    And sometimes we make a decision that seemed right at the time and later realize we’d choose differently now.

    I don’t think any of that necessarily means we failed to trust ourselves.

    It means we made a decision without having access to the future.

    Which is, unfortunately, the only kind of decision most of us get to make.

    When I read tarot, I’m not trying to take someone’s uncertainty away by handing them a predetermined answer.

    I’m more interested in the questions the cards help us ask.

    What does this card bring to mind?

    What does it invite you to consider?

    Does it resonate with something you’re already sensing, or does it offer a perspective you hadn’t entertained?

    Sometimes we need a different lens to notice something we couldn’t see from where we were standing. We might discover an influence we hadn’t considered, recognize a strength we haven’t thought to draw on, or begin to understand why we’re hesitating over something we otherwise want.

    That’s what draws me to tarot and astrology. Not the promise of a predetermined future, but the opportunity to explore the patterns, possibilities and influences that might help us meet our lives more consciously.

    A pattern can offer context without becoming a verdict. A possibility can be worth considering without becoming a promise. And something that resonates with us doesn’t have to dictate what we do next.

    You don’t have to agree with every interpretation. You don’t have to treat a card as an instruction. And you certainly don’t have to hand your judgment over to it.

    The reading is part of the conversation, not a replacement for your own voice.

    My intention, when I read for someone, is to remind them of their own agency and empower them to take control of their own lives instead of putting their future in someone else’s hands.

    We can seek perspective without seeking permission. We can take what feels useful, question what doesn’t, and decide what we want to do with what we’ve learned.

    And then we still get to choose.

    I think self-trust can get tangled up with the idea that we should be able to recognize the right choice when we see it.

    That if we really knew ourselves, listened to our intuition, or thought things through properly, we’d be able to choose correctly.

    But that puts an awful lot of responsibility on us to predict things we cannot possibly know.

    And when the outcome isn’t what we wanted, it gives us a convenient reason to turn around and put ourselves on trial.

    I should have known.

    I knew better.

    Why didn’t I listen to myself?

    Sometimes, in retrospect, we can identify something we missed. We can recognize a warning sign we dismissed or information we didn’t have at the time.

    That can be useful.

    But there’s a difference between learning something from a decision and deciding we should have been able to predict everything that followed it.

    We don’t get to make choices with hindsight.

    We make them with what we know at the time.

    And perhaps trusting ourselves means allowing that to be enough.

    Not because our judgment is infallible.

    Not because we will always choose well.

    But because we can make a considered choice without demanding that it come with a guarantee.

    We can listen to ourselves, seek information, acknowledge uncertainty, and decide what seems right given what we know.

    And then we can meet what happens next.

    If we learn something, we can take it into account.

    If our circumstances change, we can reconsider.

    If we discover that we want something different, we can change our minds.

    We don’t have to defend every decision we’ve ever made just because we made it.

    We don’t have to keep walking down a path simply to prove that choosing it was the right thing to do.

    And we don’t have to interpret every unexpected outcome as evidence that we should never have trusted ourselves in the first place.

    Sometimes a choice is right for the person we are, with the information we have, in the circumstances we’re navigating.

    And later, we become someone with different information, different needs, or a different understanding of what matters.

    We are allowed to respond to that.

    I think there’s something freeing about separating self-trust from certainty.

    Because if I can only trust myself when I know I’ll get things right, then my self-trust depends on something I can never guarantee.

    But if I can trust myself to listen, consider, choose, learn, and respond, then I have somewhere to stand even when the outcome is uncertain.

    I don’t need to know that everything will work out.

    I don’t need to believe that the universe has arranged things in my favour.

    I don’t need to find a sign that tells me which future I’m supposed to choose.

    I can be curious about the possibilities without treating them as promises.

    I can hope for a particular outcome without assuming it’s the only one I could live with.

    I can be afraid of making the wrong choice and still make a choice.

    And I can leave room for the possibility that I’ll learn something along the way.

    Maybe self-trust isn’t the feeling that you’ve finally figured everything out.

    Maybe it’s the willingness to participate in your own life even when you haven’t.

    To make a decision without knowing how it ends.

    To let yourself be a person who is learning rather than a person who is supposed to know.

    To remember that the next choice you make doesn’t have to be perfect to be yours.

    You don’t have to know how things will turn out to decide what to do next.

    Sometimes you can simply make the best choice you can with what you know.

    And trust yourself to meet what comes after.

  • Sometimes Things Just Suck

    We have a habit of looking for meaning when something hurts.

    What is this trying to teach me?

    Why did this happen?

    What am I supposed to learn from this?

    Everything happens for a reason, right?

    Maybe.

    Sometimes.

    But sometimes something just sucks.

    Not everything that happens is a lesson waiting to be uncovered. Not every difficult experience is secretly preparing you for something better. Not every loss contains a message. Not every shitty thing needs to become a chapter in your personal growth story.

    Sometimes you get bad news.

    Sometimes someone disappoints you.

    Sometimes the thing you really, really didn’t want to happen happens anyway.

    And it hurts.

    I think we’re often uncomfortable leaving it there.

    Especially when we’re used to looking for patterns.

    If we can find the reason, maybe we can make the experience feel less arbitrary.

    If we can find the lesson, maybe the pain wasn’t wasted.

    If we can turn it into growth, maybe we can feel like we got something out of it.

    And I understand the impulse.

    I do it too.

    There is something comforting about believing that everything has a purpose. It can make an unpredictable world feel a little more orderly.

    But I don’t believe everything is laid out in advance.

    And I don’t believe everything that happens to us was somehow meant to happen.

    Life isn’t a story where every terrible chapter was necessary because the ending wouldn’t have worked without it.

    Sometimes things happen because things happen.

    People make choices.

    Bodies do things.

    Systems fail.

    Circumstances collide.

    We get unlucky.

    We get lucky.

    Other people have agency.

    So do we.

    There is a lot of uncertainty in being alive.

    And I think we can acknowledge that without turning it into nihilism.

    Because meaning can still be useful without being mandatory.

    You might eventually understand something about yourself because of what happened.

    You might notice a pattern.

    You might change your mind.

    You might make a different choice next time.

    You might even look back years later and realize that something painful changed the direction of your life.

    That’s okay.

    But you don’t have to know that now.

    You don’t have to squeeze a lesson out of something while it’s still hurting.

    You don’t have to be grateful for the experience.

    You don’t have to believe it happened for you.

    And you certainly don’t have to believe that you somehow attracted it, manifested it, or failed to learn the lesson that would have prevented it.

    Sometimes the most honest thing you can say is:

    This really fucking sucks.

    And then you can make dinner.

    You can call someone you love.

    You can cry.

    You can be angry.

    You can go for a walk.

    You can watch something stupid.

    You can do absolutely nothing useful.

    You can keep living.

    Maybe meaning will come later.

    Maybe it won’t.

    I don’t think self-trust requires us to know which.

    Maybe it means trusting ourselves enough to meet what happened without immediately needing to explain it.

    There is a difference between making meaning from an experience and believing the experience was meant to happen.

    There is a difference between learning from something and believing you need the suffering in order to learn.

    There is a difference between finding something valuable afterward and deciding the painful thing was somehow valuable because it happened.

    We can let those things remain separate.

    Sometimes life gives us something beautiful.

    Sometimes it gives us something difficult.

    Sometimes it gives us something that is simply, spectacularly, profoundly shitty.

    We don’t have to make it profound.

    We don’t have to make it beautiful.

    We don’t have to make it useful.

    Sometimes things just suck.

    And maybe that’s enough truth for today.

  • Maybe You’re Not Supposed to Be Over It Yet

    There’s a strange thing that happens after something difficult.

    You feel it.

    Maybe you cry. Maybe you get angry. Maybe you finally admit that something hurt more than you wanted it to.

    And then, eventually, you have a good day.

    You make breakfast. Answer some emails. Laugh at something your kid says. Put the laundry away. Maybe you even forget about the thing for several hours.

    And because you’re functioning again, a little voice can start suggesting that you must be finished.

    Okay. I’m fine now.

    I should be over this.

    But what if those aren’t the same thing?

    What if being able to carry on with your life doesn’t mean the thing is finished with you?

    I think we sometimes imagine difficult feelings as having a tidy beginning, middle, and end.

    Something happens.

    We feel the feelings.

    We work through them.

    We learn whatever we’re supposed to learn.

    And then we put the whole thing neatly behind us and get back to normal.

    But I’m not sure people work that way.

    Sometimes something matters and then becomes quieter.

    It moves from the middle of your attention to the back of your mind.

    You’re making dinner and suddenly you remember something someone said three days ago.

    You’re driving home and realize you’re still angry.

    You’re folding towels and it occurs to you that you’re sad about something you thought you’d already dealt with.

    Or maybe nothing happens at all.

    Maybe you simply notice, Huh. I guess I’m not quite finished with that.

    That doesn’t necessarily mean you need to do anything.

    You don’t have to pull the feeling back into the foreground and start dissecting it.

    You don’t have to journal about it.

    You don’t have to figure out what it means.

    You don’t have to make a plan.

    You don’t even have to decide whether you’re still allowed to feel it.

    Sometimes something can sit on the backburner while you get on with your life.

    I think we can mistake that for being stuck.

    But there’s a difference between being unable to move forward and moving forward while something is still settling.

    Those aren’t opposites.

    You can have a genuinely good day while something in you is still tender.

    You can laugh and still be grieving.

    You can feel relieved and still be angry.

    You can enjoy yourself without having resolved everything that happened.

    You can even feel better without being over it.

    Maybe that’s part of why I like the idea of a backburner.

    Not everything needs to be cooking at full heat all the time.

    Some things can simmer quietly.

    They can exist without demanding your full attention.

    And sometimes, after you’ve had a little distance, you understand something you couldn’t see when the feeling was taking up the whole room.

    Sometimes you realize what mattered.

    Sometimes you realize what didn’t.

    Sometimes you discover that the thing you thought was about one small moment was actually about a pattern.

    Sometimes you decide you’re ready to put it down.

    And sometimes you don’t.

    I don’t think self-trust requires us to know which one it’s going to be in advance.

    It might simply mean trusting ourselves enough not to force the ending.

    Because moving forward isn’t always the same as moving on.

    Sometimes moving forward looks remarkably ordinary.

    You make the coffee.

    You answer the email.

    You pick up the groceries.

    You laugh.

    And somewhere in the background, something is still finding its place.

    That’s okay.

    You don’t have to return to who you were before something happened just because you’re able to function again.

    You don’t have to put everything behind you to keep going.

    You can keep living your life while something is still settling inside you.

    Maybe you can let today be today.

    And if it comes back tomorrow?

    You can come back, too.

  • Maybe It Wasn’t Just the Dishes

    There’s a story I see come up on Reddit every so often.

    A man writes about his divorce.

    The title is some version of: She divorced me because I left dishes by the sink.

    And at first glance, it sounds ridiculous.

    A marriage ended over a glass beside the dishwasher?

    Really?

    But that’s not actually the story.

    The story is about a pattern.

    The glass wasn’t the whole problem. It was one small, repeated thing in a much larger collection of things that had apparently been wearing away at the relationship.

    And I think about that story sometimes when I think about feelings.

    Because I wonder how often we do something similar to ourselves.

    Not with dishes.

    With “it’s fine.”

    It’s just one thing

    It’s just one unanswered message.

    One interruption.

    One time someone asked you to do something when you were already exhausted.

    One more evening when you made the plans because it was easier than waiting for someone else to decide.

    One comment that bothered you, but probably wasn’t worth bringing up.

    One disappointment that wasn’t quite big enough to justify being disappointed about.

    One time you wanted something different but thought, I don’t really care.

    And maybe you don’t.

    Maybe every individual thing really is small.

    So you let it go.

    Then another thing happens.

    And another.

    And another.

    None of them seems important enough to stop everything and say:

    Actually, this bothered me.

    So you keep going.

    You accommodate.

    You understand.

    You give someone the benefit of the doubt.

    You tell yourself it isn’t worth making a fuss over.

    And sometimes that’s exactly right.

    Sometimes letting something go is a perfectly good choice.

    But there is a difference between choosing not to make something important and never giving yourself enough space to find out whether it mattered to you.

    Small doesn’t mean meaningless

    I think we’re sometimes very good at arguing ourselves out of our own feelings.

    It’s not that serious.

    Other people have bigger problems.

    I don’t want to be difficult.

    It’s only a little thing.

    I can deal with it.

    And maybe you can.

    You probably can.

    You’re capable. You’ve dealt with plenty before.

    But capability has a strange way of making things disappear.

    If you can tolerate something, you can start believing that means you should.

    If you can accommodate something, you can start believing that means you don’t mind.

    If you can carry something, you can start believing it isn’t heavy.

    And then one day something tiny happens and you are suddenly furious.

    Or crying.

    Or sitting in the car longer than necessary because you don’t want to go inside yet.

    And the obvious thing to say is:

    Why am I so upset about this?

    Maybe the better question is:

    How long have I been telling myself it wasn’t worth being upset about?

    Sometimes resentment is a collection

    I don’t think resentment always arrives as one enormous feeling.

    Sometimes it seems to accumulate almost invisibly.

    A little disappointment here.

    A little frustration there.

    A need you didn’t mention.

    A preference you handed over.

    A hurt you decided was too small to bother with.

    A boundary you didn’t realize you’d crossed because you were busy making sure everyone else was comfortable.

    None of these moments necessarily feels like the thing.

    But they don’t necessarily disappear just because you didn’t make a fuss about them.

    They can sit quietly.

    And then something happens.

    The dishes are left by the sink.

    Again.

    And suddenly the reaction seems much bigger than the dish.

    But perhaps the dish isn’t carrying only itself.

    Perhaps it has arrived carrying every previous dish.

    Every previous “It’s fine.”

    Every previous moment of “I’ll just do it myself.”

    Every time you noticed something and decided your noticing wasn’t important enough to mention.

    This is one of the reasons I think feelings deserve some attention even when they seem small.

    Not because every irritation is secretly profound.

    Not because every annoyance needs to become a conversation.

    And certainly not because we should walk around cataloguing every minor inconvenience until we can produce an itemized list of grievances.

    Quite the opposite.

    Sometimes noticing something while it is still small means it gets to remain small.

    You don’t have to make it a big deal

    I think this is where self-trust gets interesting.

    Self-trust isn’t necessarily saying:

    This bothered me, therefore everyone needs to change.

    It’s not making every preference a demand.

    It’s not insisting that every feeling is evidence that someone else has done something wrong.

    Sometimes self-trust is much quieter.

    It’s noticing:

    I actually do mind that.

    Or:

    I thought I didn’t care, but I think I do.

    Or even:

    I’m more upset about this than I expected.

    And then you have information.

    You can decide what to do with it.

    Maybe you say something.

    Maybe you don’t.

    Maybe you ask for something different next time.

    Maybe you realize the thing wasn’t actually important once you had a little space to think about it.

    Maybe you discover that it wasn’t this particular incident that bothered you. It was the pattern.

    Maybe you discover that the pattern is yours.

    Maybe it belongs to someone else.

    Maybe there isn’t anyone to blame at all.

    You don’t have to know immediately.

    I think we underestimate the cost of “fine”

    “Fine” is useful.

    Sometimes it’s exactly what we mean.

    Sometimes dinner really is fine.

    Sometimes the change of plans really doesn’t matter.

    Sometimes you genuinely don’t care which restaurant you go to.

    Sometimes you really would rather let something go.

    But fine can also become a place we put things when we don’t have the energy to figure out what we actually feel.

    And if we keep putting things there, eventually the cupboard gets full.

    Not every item needs to be taken back out.

    But perhaps it is worth opening the door occasionally.

    Just to see what’s there.

    There may be nothing wrong

    This is the part I don’t want to lose.

    Because I don’t think the answer is to become hypervigilant about our own emotions.

    I don’t want to turn every bad mood into a message from our deepest selves.

    Sometimes you’re tired.

    Sometimes you’re hungry.

    Sometimes the day has simply been annoying.

    Sometimes someone left a glass beside the sink and that’s all it was.

    A glass.

    A glass is allowed to be a glass.

    But sometimes it isn’t.

    Sometimes the thing that finally gets you is carrying the weight of everything that came before it.

    And if you never give yourself permission to notice the smaller things, you may not realize how much you’ve been carrying until something tiny breaks the surface.

    Maybe that’s part of what healthy wallowing can be.

    Not sitting around marinating in every grievance.

    Not making pain your personality.

    Not refusing to move forward.

    Just being willing to stop for a moment and admit:

    That bothered me.

    I wanted something different.

    That hurt.

    I am more tired than I realized.

    I thought I was fine, but I don’t think I am.

    There doesn’t have to be a dramatic conclusion.

    You don’t have to turn it into a lesson.

    You don’t have to make anyone else responsible for making the feeling disappear.

    You can simply let yourself know the truth of it.

    And then decide what comes next.

    Because maybe the point isn’t to prevent every difficult feeling.

    Maybe it’s to notice them while they’re still small enough to hear.

    Before they have to become the dishes.

    Again.

  • Maybe You Don’t Need to Feel Better Yet

    I have a tendency to want to move on.

    Not necessarily because I don’t feel things deeply. Quite the opposite, actually. I can feel something very deeply and then almost immediately start looking for the way out.

    What’s the lesson here?

    What am I supposed to do next?

    How do I make this useful?

    How do I stop feeling like this?

    There is a certain appeal to those questions. They give us something to do.

    And sometimes doing something is exactly what we need.

    But sometimes something has happened and the appropriate response is simply:

    That really sucked.

    You failed the exam.

    Someone broke your heart.

    You didn’t get the job.

    A friendship ended.

    You were treated unfairly.

    Something you wanted didn’t happen.

    Someone you trusted hurt you.

    Sometimes there isn’t a silver lining.

    Sometimes there isn’t a lesson yet.

    Sometimes you’re just sad.

    Or angry.

    Or disappointed.

    And I think we’re often much less comfortable with that than we pretend to be.

    We’re very good at talking about feelings as though they’re problems waiting for solutions.

    Anger needs to be processed.

    Sadness needs to be worked through.

    Grief needs to be moved past.

    Disappointment needs perspective.

    And certainly, there are times when those things need attention. Feelings can tell us something important. They can change the way we understand ourselves, other people, and what has happened to us.

    But I don’t think every feeling needs to immediately become productive.

    Sometimes you need to wallow.

    I mean that affectionately.

    If someone breaks your heart, maybe you need a few days of terrible music, ugly crying, and telling your friend the same story for the sixth time.

    If you didn’t get something you worked incredibly hard for, maybe you need to be disappointed before you start figuring out what’s next.

    If someone has hurt you, maybe you need to be angry before you can decide what you want to do about it.

    I don’t think wallowing means giving up.

    I think sometimes it’s the opposite.

    It’s acknowledging that something mattered enough to hurt.

    There is a difference between feeling something and letting it run your life indefinitely.

    The first is human.

    The second is where we can become stuck.

    And I don’t think anyone else gets to decide exactly where that line is for you.

    There isn’t a universal number of days you’re allowed to be heartbroken.

    There isn’t a socially acceptable amount of time to grieve a friendship.

    There isn’t a deadline where disappointment is supposed to have become wisdom.

    Some things take longer than others.

    Some things seem finished until a completely ordinary Tuesday reminds you that they aren’t.

    And that doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve gone backwards.

    It might simply mean there’s something there you haven’t finished feeling.

    This is where I think about meditation.

    For years, I thought meditation was about keeping my mind focused for twenty minutes. My mind would wander, I’d notice it, and then I’d berate myself for having wandered in the first place.

    Which was particularly unhelpful once I understood that I was living with untreated ADHD.

    Then someone explained it differently to me.

    Your mind wanders.

    You notice.

    You bring it back.

    And then it wanders again.

    The return is part of the practice.

    That was a genuinely cool revelation for me.

    I hadn’t been failing at meditation. I’d misunderstood what I was supposed to be practising.

    And I think feelings can work a little like that.

    You can spend an afternoon feeling miserable about something and then laugh at a stupid video.

    You can have a good day and still be grieving.

    You can think you’re finally over it and then find yourself crying in the shower three weeks later.

    You can decide you need a break from thinking about it and then come back when you have the capacity.

    None of those things erase the others.

    You don’t have to stay inside a feeling all day for it to be real.

    You don’t have to keep yourself miserable to prove that something mattered.

    And you don’t have to force yourself to feel better just because you think you should be.

    Maybe moving forward isn’t always a clean line from feeling bad to feeling better.

    Maybe sometimes it’s more like:

    Feel it.

    Step away.

    Come back.

    Keep going.

    And then, when you need to, come back again.

    The danger of ignoring difficult feelings isn’t that they’ll somehow punish you for being insufficiently emotionally aware.

    It’s that they don’t necessarily disappear just because you’ve stopped looking at them.

    They can turn into irritability.

    Resentment.

    Anxiety.

    Numbness.

    A vague sense that something is wrong without knowing what.

    Sometimes they show up in places that have nothing obvious to do with where they began.

    I’m not suggesting that every difficult emotion needs to be excavated until you’ve found its deepest possible meaning.

    That sounds exhausting.

    Sometimes you really are just having a bad day.

    Sometimes you’re sad because you’re sad.

    Sometimes you’re angry because someone was cruel.

    Sometimes you’re disappointed because you wanted something and didn’t get it.

    That can be enough.

    And then you can decide what comes next.

    Maybe you need to cry.

    Maybe you need to complain.

    Maybe you need to take a walk.

    Maybe you need to watch something ridiculous.

    Maybe you need to talk to someone who loves you.

    Maybe you need to do absolutely nothing useful for a while.

    And maybe tomorrow you’ll feel a little different.

    Or maybe you won’t.

    That’s okay too.

    I don’t want wallowing to become another thing we can fail at.

    There’s no gold star for processing your emotions efficiently.

    There’s no achievement badge for turning pain into wisdom before anyone else.

    And there certainly isn’t a little green owl waiting to shame you because you missed your emotional-growth streak.

    Sometimes the next step is very small.

    Sometimes it is simply admitting:

    This hurts.

    Then you make dinner.

    You answer an email.

    You watch something funny.

    You go to bed.

    And maybe tomorrow you come back to it.

    That’s not standing still.

    Sometimes feeling the thing is part of moving forward.

  • What If You Just Asked for What You Want?

    I’ve been thinking a lot about preferences lately.

    Not boundaries. Not dealbreakers. Not the things that make us say an unequivocal no.

    Just preferences.

    The restaurant you’d rather go to.

    The seat you’d prefer.

    The shirt you like better.

    The way you’d like something done.

    The plan that sounds a little more fun to you.

    Small things, mostly.

    And I think we sometimes make having a preference much more complicated than it needs to be.

    There can be a strange amount of work involved in admitting that we want something.

    We want to know whether it’s reasonable.

    Whether someone else wants it more.

    Whether it’s worth bringing up.

    Whether we’ll seem demanding.

    Whether we have a good enough reason.

    Sometimes we don’t even get that far.

    Someone asks what we’d like to do, and “Whatever you want” comes out before we’ve considered the question.

    Someone asks where we’d like to eat, and we say we don’t care.

    Someone suggests a plan, and we say, “That’s fine.”

    And sometimes it really is fine.

    Sometimes we genuinely don’t have a preference.

    Sometimes we do have one and decide that it isn’t important enough to pursue.

    Sometimes we know exactly what we’d prefer and are perfectly happy to let someone else choose.

    I don’t think any of those things are failures of self-trust.

    In fact, I think self-trust requires making room for all of them.

    The important part is knowing which one you’re doing.

    Because there is a difference between choosing to accommodate someone and automatically giving the decision away.

    There is a difference between thinking, “I don’t mind”, and never checking whether you do.

    There is a difference between saying, “You choose” because you genuinely don’t care and saying it because you’ve become so accustomed to accommodating other people that your own preference doesn’t even make it into the conversation.

    And there is a difference between advocating for what you want and believing you should always get your way.

    I think we sometimes collapse those things together.

    We worry that if we admit we want something, we’re being demanding.

    So we soften it.

    “I mean, I’d prefer this, but it’s really not a big deal.”

    “I’d like to do that, if you want.”

    “I’d rather go there, but whatever works.”

    Sometimes that softening is simply our personality.

    Sometimes it’s kindness.

    Sometimes it’s an attempt to leave room for another person’s preference.

    But sometimes I wonder if we’re just trying to make our own wants as unobtrusive as possible before anyone has even responded to them.

    What if we didn’t?

    What if we could simply say:

    “I’d prefer this.”

    Not as a demand.

    Not as a declaration that our preference is objectively better.

    Just as information.

    This is what I’d like.

    Then the other person gets to respond.

    Maybe they agree.

    Maybe they don’t.

    Maybe you find a third option.

    Maybe their preference matters more to you in this particular situation, and you happily go along with it.

    Maybe yours matters more this time.

    Maybe neither of you feels strongly enough to make the decision worth much discussion.

    All of those are possible.

    Communicating what you want doesn’t decide the outcome.

    It simply gives your preference a place in the conversation.

    And I think that’s an important distinction.

    Self-trust isn’t the belief that your way is always the right way.

    It’s not needing to win every disagreement.

    It’s not putting yourself at the centre of every decision.

    It’s knowing that your own perspective is worth consulting.

    You can listen to someone else’s preference without abandoning yours.

    You can advocate for yourself without demanding that someone else agree with you.

    You can compromise without disappearing.

    And you can change your mind without deciding that you were wrong to want something in the first place.

    That last one feels particularly important.

    Sometimes we talk about self-trust as though the goal is to become completely certain about what we want.

    I’m not sure that’s possible.

    Sometimes you want something and then discover you don’t.

    Sometimes you think you care and realize you don’t.

    Sometimes you want two things that can’t both happen.

    Sometimes you very much want something and still decide that something else matters more.

    Self-trust doesn’t remove any of that complexity.

    It gives you somewhere to stand while you’re figuring it out.

    Maybe that’s why I’ve become so interested in the tiny moment before we answer.

    The moment someone asks:

    “What do you want?”

    And instead of immediately handing the decision back, we pause.

    Not because we have to make our preference known.

    Not because we’re supposed to choose ourselves every time.

    Just long enough to find out if there’s something we’d like to say.

    Maybe the answer is still:

    “I really don’t care. You choose.”

    Wonderful.

    Maybe it’s:

    “Actually, I’d rather go here.”

    That’s worth knowing, too.

    And maybe you say it.

    Maybe you don’t.

    That’s your choice.

    But there is something quietly powerful about letting yourself have a preference without immediately turning it into a justification, a negotiation, or a demand.

    You don’t have to make a fuss for your preference to matter.

    You don’t have to convince anyone that it’s the correct preference.

    You don’t even have to get what you want.

    You can simply let it exist.

    And perhaps that’s where advocacy begins.

    Not with becoming louder.

    Not with learning to insist.

    Just with allowing your own voice to enter the room.

    I’d prefer this.

    Then listening to what happens next.

    Not:

    “What if you stopped accommodating?”


    More:


    Sometimes we make having a preference much more complicated than it needs to be.


    You know where you want to eat.


    You’d rather have the window seat.


    You want your boss to consider your idea.


    You’d like your partner to do something differently.


    You want to wear the thing you actually like.


    And you don’t necessarily need a dissertation explaining why.


    You can just say:


    “I’d prefer this.”
    This is about the uncomfortable space between having a preference and feeling entitled to get your way.


    Because I think that’s where a lot of women get stuck.


    We don’t want to be demanding, so we make our preferences sound like non-preferences:


    “I mean, if you want…”


    “It’s totally fine if…”


    “I don’t really care, but…”


    “Whatever works.”


    Advocating for yourself doesn’t require certainty that your preference is objectively better.


    It can simply mean letting someone know what you’d like.


    And then being willing to hear their answer.


    That’s much more interesting to me than another post about stopping self-erasure.

  • When Accommodation Becomes Automatic

    I’m pretty good at reading people.

    Not in a particularly mystical way. I notice things.

    A change in someone’s voice. A pause before they answer. The expression that crosses their face when something isn’t quite what they wanted. The difference between “that’s fine” and that’s fine.

    I’ve learned to pay attention to those things.

    Sometimes that’s useful.

    My husband, for example, is not particularly interested in making decisions. If I wait for him to decide where we’re going to eat, we may still be discussing it tomorrow. So I make the decision.

    Then I watch his reaction.

    If he seems happy, great.

    If I can tell I’ve picked something he doesn’t actually want, I’ll usually adjust.

    There’s nothing wrong with that. In fact, I think there’s something lovely about knowing the people we love well enough to notice what they aren’t saying.

    The problem isn’t accommodation.

    The problem is when accommodation becomes automatic.

    Because there is a difference between:

    “I noticed what you need, and I chose to respond to it.”

    and:

    “I noticed what you need, so I never stopped to ask what I need.”

    From the outside, those can look exactly the same.

    A person who is accommodating can look generous, thoughtful, flexible, easygoing.

    And sometimes she is all of those things.

    Sometimes she also has a preference and has decided, quite consciously, that it isn’t important enough to pursue.

    That’s different too.

    I don’t think self-trust means insisting on every preference.

    If my husband wants Thai food and I don’t particularly care what we eat, I have no inner turmoil demanding Italian.

    Sometimes someone else’s preference simply matters more.

    Sometimes the choice genuinely doesn’t matter to us.

    Sometimes we’re willing to give something up because the relationship matters more than the thing itself.

    That’s not self-abandonment.

    That’s choice.

    What interests me is what happens when we stop knowing whether we’re choosing or simply reacting.

    Women are often rewarded for being good at accommodation.

    You’re so understanding.

    You’re so reasonable.

    You’re so flexible.

    You’re so easy to work with.

    You’re the person everyone can count on.

    Those can be genuine compliments.

    They can also teach us something.

    Not necessarily because the person praising us means to teach it, but because praise is powerful. We tend to repeat things that make other people happy.

    If being agreeable gets us approval, we may become more agreeable.

    If anticipating someone’s needs gets us appreciation, we may become very good at anticipating them.

    If never making a fuss keeps things peaceful, we may learn that peace is worth the cost.

    And eventually, something that began as a useful skill can start to feel like part of who we are.

    “I’m the reasonable one.”

    “I’m the flexible one.”

    “I don’t really care.”

    “I can work around it.”

    “I’ll just do it.”

    Maybe that’s true.

    Maybe you really are flexible.

    Maybe you genuinely don’t care where you eat.

    Maybe you’re perfectly happy to let your boss make the decision.

    Maybe you don’t mind changing the plan.

    But there’s a question I think is worth asking every once in a while:

    Do I actually not mind?

    Not because the answer needs to be no.

    It doesn’t.

    Sometimes the answer is an enthusiastic yes.

    Sometimes it’s a shrug.

    Sometimes it’s, “Actually, I’d rather do something else.”

    And sometimes you know what you want and decide not to pursue it anyway.

    All of those are different experiences.

    The important part, at least to me, is getting the chance to know which one you’re having.

    Because I don’t want to confuse self-trust with getting my way.

    I don’t think self-trust means that my preference should always win.

    It means my preference gets to exist.

    I can know what I want and still choose something else.

    I can disagree with someone and still respect their decision.

    I can accommodate someone without becoming meek.

    I can be easygoing without making myself easy to overlook.

    And I can notice someone else’s reaction without immediately making it the most important information in the room.

    That last one is probably the hardest.

    When you’ve become good at reading people, their reactions can feel urgent.

    Someone looks disappointed, and your attention moves toward them.

    Someone hesitates, and you start wondering whether you should change course.

    Someone seems unhappy with your decision, and suddenly you’re reconsidering one you were perfectly comfortable making thirty seconds ago.

    Sometimes that information matters.

    Sometimes it tells us something we genuinely need to know.

    But sometimes it is simply information.

    Someone else’s reaction doesn’t automatically become an instruction.

    That’s something I’m still practising.

    Noticing the reaction.

    Listening to it.

    And then remembering to listen for myself, too.

    Because being thoughtful about other people doesn’t require us to stop being thoughtful about ourselves.

    And perhaps that’s the distinction I’m most interested in.

    Not between being accommodating and being selfish.

    Not between being easygoing and being difficult.

    Between accommodation as a choice and accommodation as a reflex.

    There is nothing wrong with giving someone else the restaurant they wanted.

    There is nothing wrong with changing your mind because their preference matters more to you.

    There is nothing wrong with being the person who can roll with things.

    But there is something worth noticing when you no longer know what you would have chosen.

    Sometimes self-trust is simply making enough room to find out.

  • When Did Their Comfort Become Your Responsibility?

    Sometimes I hear myself apologizing before I know why.

    Sometimes it’s for interrupting someone.

    Sometimes it’s for asking a question.

    Sometimes it’s because someone else seems uncomfortable and, before I’ve had time to think, the word sorry has already left my mouth.

    The feeling is real.

    The apology is real.

    What I’m less certain about is whether the apology actually belongs to me.

    Sometimes I just feel… responsible.

    Responsible for smoothing things over.

    Responsible for making the conversation easier.

    Responsible for making sure everyone leaves feeling okay.

    It took me a long time to realize those aren’t the same thing.

    Living alongside other people means we’ll sometimes get things wrong. When we do, it’s important to own our mistakes and do what we can to make things right.

    But there are other moments that are quieter.

    The moments when someone disagrees with us.

    When someone is disappointed.

    When someone misunderstands us.

    When someone simply has an emotional reaction to something we’ve said or done.

    Somewhere along the way, many of us learned to treat another person’s discomfort as something we were expected to fix.

    Not because anyone sat us down and taught us that lesson.

    Because we absorbed it.

    A raised eyebrow.

    An awkward silence.

    A frustrated sigh.

    A subtle shift in someone’s tone.

    Eventually, we become fluent in reading the emotional weather around us.

    It’s an extraordinary skill.

    It helps us notice when a friend is struggling.

    It helps us comfort people we love.

    It helps us move through relationships with care.

    Like many strengths, though, it has a shadow.

    Sometimes we become so focused on everyone else’s emotional landscape that we stop checking in with our own.

    Someone looks uncomfortable.

    We explain ourselves before they’ve asked.

    Someone seems disappointed.

    We immediately start looking for what we did wrong.

    Someone grows quiet.

    We begin rearranging ourselves to make the silence disappear.

    I’ve done all of those things.

    I still do them sometimes.

    Not because I believe women should simply stop caring about other people.

    Care is one of the things I value most.

    But care and responsibility aren’t the same thing.

    Someone else’s feelings deserve compassion.

    Compassion doesn’t automatically make them ours to carry.

    That distinction has changed the way I move through the world.

    Not dramatically.

    Quietly.

    Now, every so often, I catch myself rushing to make someone else more comfortable.

    Before I apologize.

    Before I explain.

    Before I make myself smaller.

    I try to pause.

    Just long enough to ask one question.

    Is this actually mine to carry?

    Sometimes the answer is yes.

    Sometimes I’ve genuinely made a mistake.

    Sometimes I owe an apology.

    Sometimes I need to listen more carefully.

    Other times…

    The discomfort belongs to the conversation itself.

    Or to the other person’s expectations.

    Or to a difference of opinion that doesn’t need to be erased.

    Learning to tell the difference is still a practice.

    I’m not writing this because I’ve mastered it.

    I’m writing it because I’m practising it too.

    And every now and then, that small pause reminds me of something I’d forgotten.

    Not every uncomfortable feeling belongs to the person who notices it first.